Mortibody
by storyless
Summary: SeymourxMika. Yes, really. Seymour brings an old Maester to life and hopes to make the love between them eternal.


A/N: Yes, it's a total crack pairing, it was written in response to a fic request meme. Bear with us!

Mortibody

I've been witness to many mysteries and purveyor of many secrets in my career as a maester. However, it was the one I was born with and kept chained closest to my core that was the one that posed the greatest threat to my standing. The other maesters would ask me why I had no wife, no heir to inherit the my blood and my throne. My excuses were paltry half-truths; as a maester of Yevon I dare not to lie outright –at least not to my own clergy-fellows. And thus, for my first twenty-five years as maester I was too absorbed by my career to court a wife and the last twenty-five, I was too old. So it remained still within me, sequestered to all save the latest nights in my private chamber. And for decades, it remained that way.

--

Jyscal's son, the half-breed. When I first met him he was all of five. Even then, there was a strange familiarity in the boy's face –his sturdy Guado features so unlike my own withering, liver-spotted visage.

"Seymour, this is Grand Maester Mika." Jyscal's stroked the boy's blue hair in a fatherly way. Half hidden behind his father's robes, the child curved his hands in a trembling salute.

"The child knows his prayers. You teach him well, Jyscal." I smiled at young Seymour. He shrank away, his eyes fastened to mine with fear and respect, as a wounded fawn might regard a vulture. Hidden in the drape of his father's vestments, the child spoke out hoarsely and defiant.

"Mother taught me the prayers, not father. Mother's gone now, she--"

"Enough, Seymour." Jyscal bowed. "Forgive him, my lord. Recent events--"

"I understand, Jyscal." But in reality, I would not understand for years. I would not understand the _something_ shimmering in those beryl eyes, something I recognized but could not name.

--

I pulled my cloak around me, shivering. I always liked to visit my courtyard garden on early spring nights --the Macalanian Moonroses attracted breathtaking swarms of migrating Rainbow Moths that bobbed and shimmered like pyreflies. In times of turmoil and Sin attacks, the familiar beauty of my garden imbued in me the strength to lead my flock. And tonight, I ached for the beautiful familiar, as it had a long evening of the uncharted. Yet before my mind could make to reel in the frantic strings of experiences and newness, I heard him behind me.

"Are you regretting our evening, my Lord? Are you regretting my return?" The slithering sway of Seymour's voice worked like a python upon my being, and the threat of being devoured whole made my spirit soar. "I could set out for Baaj before daybreak, you'd never have to see me again." His words meant to imply an insecurity that would not be found in his voice.

I rose and turned to meet him. I quaked at the sight of his body cloaked in a robe of diaphanous violet silk. Upon meeting my gaze, Seymour uncrossed his arms and an early spring gale opened the robe in dramatic billows. Skin bleached by the twin moons of Spira, Seymour's strange Guado musculature shuddered and flexed as I again set about exploring the smooth contours of my first real lover. The oddness of his eighteen years to my seventy-four had been conquered by the relief that came with our shared revelation, intimate as the intimacy itself. _Yevon_, how I wanted him.

I pulled him to me, confident Spira could not shun us within my courtyard walls. I wanted him more than the Rainbow Moths or Moonroses, I wanted him to be my only _beautiful familiar_, from this night forth.

Between the press of kisses, I whisper. "You make this old man feel so alive."

"You make me feel as though I could never die." He responds.

--

Seymour's face was drawn and his eyes swam in panic. "I only did it so we could be together. Father learned of my--of _our_ secret." And yet, Seymour could not lie. Not _really_ --his even, measured tone of voice belied him. This was no act taken out of heartsick desperation. He had planned this, he knew what he must do to become maester.

This was a crime worthy of the high court of Yevon, but because I loved him, I did said nothing as Seymour stood before Jyscal's body, which was riddled and scorched by his son's own staff. When he began to send, I was reminded of our first night together, ten years ago. Seymour was a dancer as he was a love-maker –with a light raking of his claws across my abdomen, he could summon pleasure the likes of which could pull the dead back from the farplane.

And perhaps it was that which gave me the strength to wake up the next morning. In the night, tortured by Jyscal's dead face with its pleading, muted eyes and haunted by my love for his murderer, my heart had failed and I had died. And yet, because I still loved Seymour, I awoke the next day. The man who killed me was the man who kept me on this side of the plane.

"You smell strange, love." Seymour said, as he wrapped his arms around my withered torso, early the next morning.

--

At the end of our lovemaking, worn and glistening, I pressed my form into his. It was easy, for a wilting old man like me to feel small and seed-like next to a body like Seymour's. His heart was still pumping hard, a small explosion with each beat, the aftershocks of which I could feel from my scalp to my toes. Breathing slowly, I watched a Moonrose unfurl itself for a hungry moth.

Careful with the thin skin upon the back of my hand, Seymour gives my fingers a little squeeze. "You understand what I am to do, yes?"

I understood. I understood and I _longed _for it. The vigor of supernatural agelessness, even as harvested from this distorted interpretation of the Teachings was by far preferable to this guttering existence as an unsent. "You become the Fayth. You become Sin. You take me in--" I recited.

"I _absorb _you." Seymour emphasized his words with an nip on my earlobe.

"And we will be together, for the rest of eternity."

"We will _be_ the rest of eternity."

"I love you, Seymour."

"And I you, truly. It's all for us, love. Promise me, Mika, that you won't be jealous of her.." He smiled at me, the edges of his face traced in silvery strokes of moonlight, the wind shaking his stiff blue hair like stalks of late-summer corn.

I nodded, solemnly watching the migrating Rainbow Moths flutter in ribbony strands above us. I had seen Braska's daughter and her steely cadre of guardians and that was enough to know Seymour would fail. I only hoped that love might keep his spirit tethered to this side of Spira, as it did mine. He would fail and he would die. Though I loved him too much to tell him, he would see my face moistened by tears if only he cared to look at me.

That night I dreamt, prophetically, of pyreflies.

_May Yevon bless the lovers, us._


End file.
